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So I watched this video, Forks over Knives. More on that later, but I did start wondering about sugar alternatives like honey, since I’ve never been entirely clear on the whole business. Sugar’s not good for us, but is honey much better?

glucose and fructose are the basic sugars.

sucrose (table sugar) is disaccharide made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose; it’s broken down into glucose and fructose in the digestive tract.

There are also maltose, lactose and other sugars that I’m not consdering here.

Fruit and vegetables contain both sucrose, and free glucose and fructose; the proportions vary.

Apples and Pear have a much higher percent of fructose (total).

Apricots, plums, and sweetcorn have a somewhat lower percent of fructose (total).

HFCS – the one in soft drinks is 55% fructose and 42% glucose. Derived from corn syrup via further chemical process.

Fructose is much sweeter than glucose (so less can be used) and has a lower glyemic index, but has equivalent impact on diabetes. Unlike glucose, fructose must be metabolized by the liver and excessive amounts may cause liver problems (such as fatty liver)

It’s not clear why HFCS would be worse than sugar, but rats did gain more weight and get more unhealthy on HFCS than on plain sugar. See Princeton study on rats. They hypothesize that glucose and fructose bound together into sucrose metabolizes differently than as free glucose and fructose.

There’s a number of studies that are particularly focused on HFCS, and of course the usual it’s-all-just-sugar, but I don’t find the results conclusive; everyone has an agenda. Here’s one analysis and an article on liver issues.

Given my personal opinions about nutrition, and this is fairly well supported by all the information out there; the right answer is certainly “none of the above”. Honey is not that different in proportion from HFCS but is the least processed, the most local, and has minerals, enzymes, and antioxidants.

We picked up our hive components at Glory Bee, in Eugene. Dad assembled and painted base, hives and top, and made a little table for the hives to sit on.

We ordered too late to get local bees, though, so we had to mail order a package. The bees arrived in the mail (our postman is quite understanding), in the small box you see. 3 pounds of bees is tens of thousands of individuals.

It was quite exciting to get the bees into the hive. You dump the bees in, and carefully hang the queen in her little box inside the hive

From time to time during the summer, I inspect the hive to make sure the queen was there and doing her job of producing baby bees.

In September, we harvest the honey. The bees don’t like this very much; there’s a lot of angry buzzing for a few weeks, and don’t get too close to the hive. They eventually get over it.

It’s a difficult, very, very messy job to extract honey with the mechanical extractor; it has to be done inside since the anyplace outside we’d encounter the resentful rightful owners. The only place we have is the kitchen, which at least is incentive to get the extraction done quickly.